Embrace Your Calling

We have seen throughout our study of the book of Ephesians that God is building a new humanity, a new society, which He wants to be a contrast society with the city of man, the world. The Church is God’s new society and within God’s new society there is a divine order. He has ordered a relational structure within His new society. Within God’s new society every category of people (husbands and wives, parents and children, workers and bosses) have responsibilities and obligations. Embracing your calling within God’s new society is part of living a Spirit-filled life. This morning’s sermon explores how we go about embracing our calling and to that end we will explore three things. (1) Submit to the Divine Order. Paul uses the fifth commandment as his foundation for his instruction. The Word of God is universal over everything and is there is an order for us to submit to. (2) Trust the Divine Order. In v.1 when Paul tells children to obey their parents he says simply, “For this is right.” Again Paul shows this by basing his teaching on the fifth commandment, which is the hinge between the two tables of the law. In the first table (commandments 1-4) we learn what it means to love God with all our being and in the second (commandments 5-10) we learn the summary of loving our neighbor as ourselves. And the fifth concerning honoring our parents and those in authority over us is the hinge.

The third point is to live in the grace of the divine order. How can we possibly get the power to live in God’s divine order in His new society? We need to understand the grace of the divine order. One of the reasons God gave us His Law is to show us our inability to keep it in order to show us our need for grace and to drive us to Christ. In other words, we need a real, loving, heavenly Father. And the gospel gives us a heavenly Father who loves us perfectly and completely. So that whether we had wonderful parents, or carry with us hurt from our families, we need to see the love of our heavenly Father.